It was a software company of note, i2, based just outside of Cambridge.
We sat in reception waiting for the internal recruiter to usher in for a group briefing on their Trainer vacancy.
I smiled cordially at one of the competitors who sheepishly looked away.
In we went to their meeting room, to be given a 20 minute brief on the role and their expectations.
“Any questions?”
<yes do you have parking on site?> asked another of the competitors, who I vaguely recalled had gotten out of their Mini at the company’s large private car park.
We all scribbled away our notes, including answers to each other’s q’s.
I left my question to the end, “May I grab five minutes with the hiring manager?”
I like to think they all looked at me begrudgingly as they left the room, leaving me to have a proper chat with the Training Manager.
Probably not, they may have thought I hadn’t listened.
Anyhoo, a day or so later I checked out their adverts and it was the classic rigmarole of
My favourite client is a notable software company on the outskirts of Cambridge which has parking for a Mini.
To be honest, mine wasn’t hugely different in the intro - Tracy always laughed at my myclient opener although she could never tell me why it was funny.
But where mine did differ was that I took care in describing what the role actually was, instead of pasting the JD, and why I thought it was a good career move.
Not because I expressly thought a better advert would attract better candidates, but because I was distilling what I felt were the important parts of the brief into words.
I bumped into David a few years ago, and he’d gone from being a Trainer there to a senior sales guy - exactly the opportunity for career development I’d described and he’d hoped for.
At the time my fill rate was around 50%, IIRC, which isn’t bad for contingency.
Chatting to my Director, she was pleased with my progress and felt a lot of it was down to how I qualified companies and candidates.
Looking back it’s easy to see the path that’s developed me into the recruiter I am now.
When I didn’t do work right at the top of the process, the consequences only magnified the further on we went.
Such as companies I was keen to work with, but when they gave us the chance to send CVs, the only information you could access was their job description.
How are you supposed to gain any insight on a Job Title vacancy, if the only information you have is what a candidate might be able to tell you from that job title alone?
If they already know what the job is and it broadly looks like what they are doing now - why would they go through the stress of changing jobs?
Might as well just say “Software Trainer, Cambridge, free parking, £35k” and leave it there.
On the flip side, often the companies I was most effective in recruiting for were ones I’d recruited for over a few years.
I got to know them, their context and culture, what they really need in their candidates, who would thrive there for the right reasons, and who would leave early.
In other words, my quality of information was better. Information that could be better gained through quality of brief, and iterating over time as we cut through their pitch to the truth of their business.
At the end of my 5-year tenure at Whitehill Pelham, my fill rate was around 70%, a good improvement in a couple of years. But I also know my retention had gone up, and, more than that, anecdotal feedback was that candidates were delivering better than expected.
The quality of work you deliver is defined by the quality of information you gain.
You may call it a brief or a job intake meeting. I call it a consultation.
Whatever you call it, that meeting is key to providing good service.
Otherwise, you’re only measured by the quality and quantity of CVs sent.
CVs that may or may not be viable candidates - who can say?
In 2008, I had an account management meeting with PPD, a large clinical research organisation near Cambridge.
I worked principally on HR roles for them, placing 15 people in 3 years at their centralised head office.
Doug, the HRD who I’d also placed, told me that they took metrics of all their suppliers, and based on the quality of candidates, CVs to interview, vacancies to placement, and retention - I was their most effective recruiter. This was a company of 3,000 staff in Europe, growing 30% YOY, who recruited mainly through agencies.
I didn’t do anything special for them. I just got to know the business and who would or wouldn’t enjoy working there. It was the quality of my brief that distinguished my results.
And yet they were very hard to get meetings out of, and I don’t think they saw the correlation between the quality of the brief they enabled, with the outcomes they could expect.
As we come into the AI era in recruitment, the next few years will automate many transactional steps.
Recruiters that take JDs without a brief, post a job description as an advert, and send unqualified CVs - how many will be replaced by low-cost automation?
AI will be able to give a better experience to candidates unburdened by the challenge of volume - live updates on applications, chatbot-style conversations, efficient interview arrangements and guidance, automated paperwork and onboarding.
These are features of software to be launched next year - Cielo. And it’s only the beginning.
The impact won’t be immediate - Blockbuster hung on for a few years after the advent of Netflix. The delay will be adoption, not technology.
By 2028, I expect the recruitment landscape to be very different - if our AI overlords let us do any work that is.
So to have longevity and add value it becomes incumbent to do the things AI can’t - gain specific situational insight, challenge false assumptions and bias, build trust and engage stakeholders on a human level.
You can’t do these without an effective consultation, whether you’re talking to an employer or a candidate.
Just some thoughts that came to mind having beta tested Mitch Sullivan’s new course on Taking the Job Brief.
It’s going to be a great intro for recruiters who want to move away from a transactional approach, and who want to make more of an impact with their customers.
Good process, enabled by technology, should be a win for everyone.
Sorry, I thought this would be a brief newsletter.
Regards,
Greg
p.s. I’ve now been writing these newsletters for 13 months. Over 100,000 words of content. Should I publish them as a book?
Yes, publish them as a book!